ANTT: an essential tool for effective blood culture collection

Blood culture collection is an important and topical intravenous procedure for the management of suspected infection. Contaminated samples can lead to 'false positive' results, and inappropriate clinical interventions, which can compromise patient outcome and incur significant expense to healthcare organizations. The contamination of blood culture samples by ineffective aseptic technique has been estimated to be as high as 10% (Department of Health (DH), 2007a). Aseptic Non Touch Technique (ANTT) is a ground-breaking global initiative designed to improve outcomes of aseptic technique through the rationalization and standardization of practice. The ANTT blood culture collection guideline provides nationally peer-reviewed guidance on safe and efficient blood sampling for laboratory culture. The guideline complements the DH's (2007a) Saving Lives summary of best practice for taking blood cultures, providing health professionals with a standardized method of complying with best practice guidance from the epic project (Pratt et al, 2007).